Grief

 I feel like this is where I am.   There is a lot of pretending and little being me. There are so many things that just need the light of day, they need and want to get out of my head and heart.  I think that there are a lot of things that I am afraid to write that they will sound stupid, they will hurt to much they will make me even more of a loner in this life.  I am afraid to write about the anger that I feel about the life that I have lived. The unfairness the injustices.  I fear it sounded like oh poor me when that is the last thing that I want to do.    I think it goes back to I have a happy personality and a sad soul.  I think I need to learn to navigate that.  I am a happy person I love being a mom and a teacher and yet there is always that part that longing part that grief that deep deep pain that is heavy on my heart.  I think I am doing better.  I am understanding more and I think even more happy comes from that understanding.  I think there will always be these two parts of me.  And the sad is not saying that I will never be happy I think its just the acknowledgement that that things were awful terrible for a really long time and I am doing everything that I possibly can today to unlearn all the awful terrible that I was taught to believe about myself.  I think that knowing that there is a part of me that is never going to totally let the past go is almost a relief.  When you work for so long towards  something like totally freedom from the past, then realize you know this is always going to be a part of me,  this is always going to be the pieces that have gotten me here today.
 There has to come a time when you are not good with that but there is a knowing that even with all of that you are still you and you are not so terrible.  I am sure that is something I will try to fight forever but there are pieces that know it will always be there. I will never stop speaking or writing or getting others to understand the damage and the pain.  I will always speak up,  I will never stay silent ever again for the ones who don't have a voice yet.  Sometimes being an advocate is more than hard, sometimes it gets more than heavy but I am a person that will fight until my dying breathe to try to make people understand and to let that person know that they are not alone.  I will work as hard as I can to try and make sure they don't have to feel the things that I have in doing the work alone. In surviving alone.  I have a few who have shown me that I am worth it, I am loved and they see the person that I am.  Valerie, Neil, Mark those are the people that help me stay strong and see my worth.  Those are the people that make living my life happy . They make me feel cared for.  So I keep fighting living this life.And someday I will get all of the thoughts the memories the traumas, the disasters out of my head and help even more.  If I am not helping if I am not doing good for others then really what am I do.  So I write from the heart, I fight for the voiceless and for the parts of me that so need to be fought for.   I will always have an amount of grief that is not measurable in this world,  but hope that the times I visit that grief place will be shorter and shorter.

I heart your heart.

To me its not just a book

I am more than frustrated more than upset.  I walked into Vincent's room and there was a Jesus Calling book .  I can tell you that my blood started to boil in 2.1 seconds.  How dare my mother buy him that book and think it was ok. You do not get to treat people the way that he does and that be ok.  You don't get to be unkind and read a book like that.  If you are going to read a book like that then you have to do certain things you have to reach out to others you have to be real honest and true in every sense of the word.  You have to think before you say things. You have to build others up and not tear them down.  This is so much more than just a book.  Like this is something who a person is not something that a person can read because its the cool thing to do.

I know that my  responses are huge but growing up the way that I did with religion and God.  I have a right to be angry and upset and confused.  I think that my views on religion are different because if you claim to believe in those things than there are certain things that a person should and shouldn't do .  If you are going to talk about kindness and doing what God tells you to do, then ignore and pretend that all is well. I expect certain things if you claim to believe and pretend that you are better then me. If you are going to read a book like that your actions need to meet the words. 

I think think no I am sure that I ave a different view . I believe that if you say you are those things that you should act and be a certain way.  I can not tell you the number of times that I have reached out to someone who says that they are christian and regularly go to church and I have been hurt beyond belief.  I knew from the time I was very young that church was not something for me.  When you are having things happen in your own house that you can't understand and you have to go to church and you see two different versions of your own father the confusion is unimaginable.  When you all have to say your prayers at night and hold hands and your only prayer to god is to die so you don't have to be hurt anymore.  That is something serious.  When reading a book about peace and kindness and get laughed at  because its not what they believe.  It's a youth group leader saying that she  doesn't believe you.  Because your just fat and unpopular who would do that.  The priest , a fucking priest that comes into my home and says well I didn't believe it anyway talking about me pressing charges on my father.  All those things, all those things.  And that is as a teenager, not even counting being an adult.

I tried so hard to fit into that world.  I wanted to belong, I wanted it to be real but all I was shown was hypocrites that all walk in the same circle speaking the same talk but their actions do not match their words.  I am so over being judged because I believe in the blue sky and the little bird. I believe in the pelican, that came to visit me on my loneliest day.  I believe in the blue sky, and the breeze in the trees.   I believe in the whales that truly gave me a reason a live, they gave me a purpose.  I will not be judged for what I believe, for what is in my heart for the things that make me happy.  I am not lesser of a person because I don't believe the way that others do.  Never once have I said anything about what others believe.  You have to do what works for you.      I believe that a person has to do what is right for them.  I believe that a person has to be everything true and real you can not believe one thing and throw barbs. 

I heart your heart.

The undone

Yes, this. I watch this and every time  I feel a connection a knowing that I wish I could not understand. I watch this and I can't breathe, I can't see anything and I remember moments like that and my heart breaks.  The only difference is imagine it was me, and I was 5 or 10 and 13.  And then imagine that no one was there to help.  NO one was there to even let you know that you were ok and that you were safe now.  No one asked  me what happened, or where it hurt. And people wonder why I do the things I do today.  There are oh so many reasons and they are not excuses, they are not oh poor Callahan . There are truths that I have survived hell and a little more kindness a little more understanding is all that I have ever asked.

This was my life.  Even though the rapes were pretty constant there are times that they were worse , times that they stuck out  in my memory. That they hurt m so much. And during the times it was worse, this just this. When in my head there was no way for me to make sense. There was no way for me to get back up and pretend that everything was fine.  Times that even for me I was overwhelmed and , the world stopped because I couldn't even breathe, I couldn't move and I would stay in bed waiting for the pain to stop. I wanted, the world to stop spinning and wait for me to gain some footing.I wanted to believe I was still alive and I had to keep fighting.  At 5; imagine knowing these things at 5. That was my life.  You don't have words to explain and the confusion is something so real .  And you feel terrible because there are things that you should know but you don't. You are in a state of complete discombobulation. That.

This was me at 5. 5 little years old. The night, well the first completed rape that I remember by my father.  I was tearing my tissue into a million little pieces wanting to stop crying wanting my body to stop hurting wanting someone to do something to take away, the hell. I wanted to know that I wasn't alone . I wanted someone to be there to keep me safe to tell me that it wasn't my fault that I didn't do anything wrong.  I wanted someone to make me feel safe and sound in my own house in my room in my bed. That just wasn't there.  The things that I thought. That I hoped I cleaned up the blood, that I wished I could have stopped crying. That I wanted him to be proud of me that I didn't tell.  That I wanted to scream what happened to me, but no words were ever able to come out. I was angry at myself for waking him up and the argument that ensued in my room.  I was the cause of it all.  Finally being able to feel my legs again and going to the living room only to find my mother kneeling in front of my father.  Feeling like she had betrayed me, why was she doing that when he had hurt me so badly.  There was no way for a 5 year old to understand.  But I knew what he was doing, I knew what she was doing and how does a small child understand that.  So I turned around straightened my covers and wished for it all to stop.

This was me in the back of the red van my little legs shaking staring out the window not understanding why something so terrible was happening on such a beautiful day.  Being able to notice the breeze in those huge trees and the weight of Albert on top of me , he was rough and didn't care what he was doing. I can remember when he was done, the smirk on his face and he told me to get dressed. My legs wouldn't move, I can just imagine what I looked like.  I just wanted to get back to my little tadpoles,  I remember my little wobbly legs and that I wasn't sure would carry me back to my tadpoles.  They were all that mattered of coarse I made it to them only to have his big black boots crushing them telling me that next time I wouldn't fight.  And me I was angry that I bit my nails and couldn't pick them up fast enough.  And I can see others around and not one person stepped up not one person told me that it was ok.  Not one person told me that I was something lovable and worthy.  I fought. I fought for my life and those little tadpoles.

 This was me, When I was 13 and was raped by 5 men for hours, and hours and nothing in the world made sense.  I knew what rape was at this point I knew what to do and what to expect but this was everything overwhelming , unimaginable .  I wasn't even a person , I wasn't a living breathing little girl I was something to be used to make them happy .  I was a body to be broken. I was a body to be laughed at, torn apart and my soul crushed.  There was not an understanding of what had happened to me.  I was in and out of even being conscience.  I had come to believe that this was my life you just fix things live through them and keep moving even when nothing is ok.  I was cracking and no one saw the despair,  no one saw the bruises the atrociousness of the things that happened to me that day.  There are pieces of that day I will never know and for that I am grateful because the things I do know are as haunting as they come.  When they finally left and I fixed the fringe on the rug and placed the pillows where they went there was just me to pick up the pieces of my body, my heat and soul and try to be. Try to just be a 13 year old girl again.  Because after that , there is no going back. As much as I tried there was no ever going back to the girl I was before.  I watch and he doesn't even know whose blood is on his skin and and he can't speak and that is how I have felt so many times in this life trying to make it through . Trying to survive the unsurvivable.  When guns are in your mouth, in your body and that fear is so huge and the only thing that makes sense is please pull the trigger Kill me because I don't know how to live with this., Or after this . I don't know how to live through this.



I watch this video and think If someone was there and saw me if just someone could have said its ok. Your safe now.

I heart your heart.   

For the new Year , time to care for my heart

May we honor It

I don't give a damn

Wishing you unimaginable amounts of happiness.

These are the things that I am going to hold onto through out this year.

May we honor it came from a song. One of those songs that stops you in your tracks and you listen over and over thinking OMG this is it, these are the words this is my heart YES THIS.

I believe that there is a lot of hard work ahead of me this year.  I have never been one to step back or stop because something is hard .  I think this is going to be one of those years, I think I am going to look back and find that I have found some of the things that I most want.   This year its not about the things I worry about and all the ways that I worry people will see me and I don't want to be pesky and a bother.  It can not be about the things that I don't want but about the things I do want.

I want to find healing I want to find that place where my heart can rest.  I want to find that place where I am comfortable in my own skin. I want to be able to stand tall and know that I don't have all the answers but know that I will never stop searching.  I want to make a difference I want to keep writing until the cringe is gone in all that has happened to my heart and soul.  I want to be proud of myself for the fight that I have for the strength to keep going.  A friend said just last week do you realize that some people would not have survived?  I shrugged thinking of coarse they would , but those words that used to vanish have stuck around and are trying to find their place. I want to be able to stand in that; I want to be proud that I am a fighter and that I made it somehow someway I lived. I want to be proud that I survived and know that I am not less of a person because of the things that have happened..  Too often these days surviving is more than shameful,  I want to change that.  I still would rather crawl in a hole than acknowledge the things that have happened.  I rake myself over the coals for the parts I am unable to remember for the details that have done everything to make them fit inside a nice neat box where I can pretend they don't hurt me anymore.  Sometimes I pretend to be this strong warrior that wont let them win, but there are still moments that they do.  Moments when the memories still pierce my soul and I just want some reassurance that I am not as awful as the memories in my head.

I heart your heart .

I don't give a damn

I don't give a damn
What you were wearing
I don't give a damn how much you drank
I don't give a damn
If you danced with him earlier in the evening
If you texted him first/ or were the one to go back to his place
People may continue to come up with reasons "Why it happened"
But the truth is,  I don't give a damn.

But I do give a damn how you're doing
I give a damn about you being ok
I give a damn if you're if you're being blamed for the hurt you were handed
If you're being made to believe you're deserving of pain

The only reason I am standing here
Is because people gave a damn about my well being/ even when I did not
They reminded me that I carry light
And I deserve to be loved
Even when I forgot

They gave a damn
That's why I am who I am today.

So here's the takeaway
When we step up for survivors
When we stop sealing them off in shame
When we quit interrogating them with stupid questions

Look What Happens
Books are written, laws are changed
We remember we were born to create
To Not only survive, but look hot and celebrate

Tonight we must come away knowing
That I will always, always give a damn about you
The way that you gave a damn about me.

I saw Chanel recite this poem the other day and it wrecked me and I have watched it multiple times every day since then. This changed me in ways, ways that I don't have words for  this made me feel not so alone.  This made me realize and be oh so grateful for those people in my life that give a damn about me. I think this made me stronger in ways that I am not even sure that I understand.  Because I am not going to stop talking wring and sharing.  I am one of those people that is going to keep sharing until things are different until people are heard until are cared for and understood.  I have this poem printed and in a frame in my bathroom.  I read it every morning.  I more than fear being forgotten , not being believed feeling like i have to prove myself and I don't want to do that anymore.  I want to some day feel pretty, someday I want to celebrate who I am and how far that I have come.  I want that.  I want that more than even I understand.  As this new year begins and the challenges that are in my path are steady and strong, I am stronger and I am not giving up.  I look forward for the ways that I will change this year. I am making new connections, saying how I feel and letting go of the people and things that make me sad.  I am connecting with people that are like me, that understand that I can look to and think ok they made it so can I.  I am connecting with people who share my passions and its nothing to be laughed at and mocked but celebrated and shared and that is more than a great feeling and I need more of that.  I think as sad as my heart is how much that I want to crawl somewhere far away,  I am standing hoping and waiting for the time that I don't want to crawl away but the day that I can stand and say today is really hard be here and love me or leave because I don't want any more sometime people.  I don't want any more heartache.  I believe that as hard as the beginning of this year has been things are going to happen that I could never even imagine in my wildest dreams.  So here is to the fighter in my heart and believing that I can have all the things that I long for.

I heart your heart.